Turtle Bay mansion sells for $34.4M

A century-old townhouse in Turtle Bay sold for $34.35 million, making it the most expensive sale of the week, the New York Times reported.

The sale of 21 Beekman Place, at 50th Street, set records for a 20-foot-wide Manhattan townhouse and for square footage for any single-family townhouse, at $4,754 per square foot.

The record in that category had been set last December when 14 East 94th Street sold for $24 million, or $4,380 per square foot. Prior to that, the record was held in 2005 when Woody Allen’s townhouse at 118 East 70th Street sold for $22.62 million, or $3,835 a square foot.

The property was sold to the State of Qatar, the sovereign Arab emirate on the Persian Gulf. The next incarnation of the 13-room house near the United Nations will probably serve a diplomatic purpose.

The 7,226-square-foot brick residence, also known as the Ellen Biddle Shipman House after the landscape architect who owned it from 1919 to 1946, was listed at $48.5 million when it entered the market last fall after the death of its most recent owner, financier Peter Novello, who paid $10.8 million in 2008.

Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens represented Novello’s estate in the sale. The broker for the buyer was not disclosed. [NYT]– James Comtois